SSTI Company Profile

We are the leader in gunshot detection solutions that help law enforcement officials and security personnel identify, locate and respond to gun violence. We offer our software solutions on a SaaS-based subscription model to customers around the world, with current customers located in the United States and South Africa. Our public safety solution, ShotSpotter Flex, is deployed in urban, high-crime areas to help deter gun violence by accurately detecting and locating gunshots and sending near real-time alerts to law enforcement. Our security solutions, SST SecureCampus and ShotSpotter SiteSecure, are designed to help law enforcement and security personnel serving universities, corporate campuses and key infrastructure and transportation centers mitigate risk and enhance security by notifying authorities and first responders of an active-shooter event occurring in our deployment area almost immediately. The speed and accuracy of our solutions enable rapid response by law enforcement and security personnel, increase the chances of apprehending the shooter, aid in evidentiary collection and can serve as an overall deterrent.

Our solutions consist of our highly-specialized, cloud-based software integrated with our proprietary, internet-enabled sensors and communication networks. When a potential gunfire incident is detected by our sensors, our software analyzes and validates the data and precisely locates where the incident occurred. An alert containing a location on a map and critical information about the incident is transmitted directly to subscribing law enforcement or security personnel through any internet-connected computer and to iPhone® or Android mobile devices.

For gunshots occurring outdoors, our software transmits the validated sensor data along with a recorded digital file of the triggering sound to our Incident Review Center (“IRC”), where our trained acoustic experts are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to screen and confirm actual gunfire incidents. Our acoustic experts can supplement alerts with additional tactical information, such as the potential presence of multiple shooters or the use of high-capacity weapons. For outdoor gunshot incidents reviewed by our IRC, alerts are typically sent within 45 seconds of the gunfire incident.

We generate annual subscription revenues from the deployment of our public safety solution on a per-square-mile basis. As of December 31, 2017, we had 77 public safety customers with coverage areas of approximately 510 square miles in 88 cities and municipalities across the United States, including three of the ten largest cities in the United States. In 2014, we began selling two security solutions, SST SecureCampus and ShotSpotter SiteSecure, which are typically sold on a subscription basis, each with a customized deployment plan. As of December 31, 2017, we had seven security customers covering eight higher-education campuses, of which all customer solutions are fully deployed. SST SecureCampus and ShotSpotter SiteSecure are designed to detect either outdoor gunfire utilizing our outdoor sensors, or both indoor and outdoor gunfire utilizing a combination of our outdoor and indoor sensors. To date, while we have seen growing interest in our security solutions, interest in the indoor gunshot detection offering has been limited. We expect future customer deployments for our security solutions to consist primarily of outdoor gunshot detection deployments. We are evaluating our options with regard to our indoor gunshot detection offering, which may include ceasing to offer indoor gunshot detection or partnering with an indoor gunshot detection solution provider. For the year ended December 31, 2017, substantially all of our revenues are attributable to customers based in the United States.

Our solutions consist of our highly-specialized, cloud-based software integrated with our proprietary, internet-enabled sensors and connected through third-party communication networks. We brand our solutions based on particular use cases and target customers as follows:

ShotSpotter Flex. ShotSpotter Flex, our public safety solution, serves cities and municipalities seeking to identify, locate and deter persistent, localized gun violence by incorporating a real-time gunshot detection system into their policing systems.

SST SecureCampus. SST SecureCampus helps the law enforcement and security personnel serving universities, colleges and other educational institutions mitigate risk and enhance security by notifying authorities and first responders of an active-shooter event almost immediately.

ShotSpotter SiteSecure. ShotSpotter SiteSecure is designed to serve customers such as corporations trying to safeguard their facilities and public agencies focused on protecting critical infrastructure, including train stations, airports and freeways.

ShotSpotter Flex is designed to detect outdoor gunfire only using our proprietary outdoor sensors. SST SecureCampus and ShotSpotter SiteSecure are designed to detect either outdoor gunfire utilizing outdoor sensors, or both indoor and outdoor gunfire utilizing a combination of our outdoor and indoor sensors. To date, while we have seen growing interest in all of our solutions, interest in the indoor gunshot detection offering has been limited. We expect future customer deployments for our security solutions to consist primarily of outdoor gunshot detection deployments. We are evaluating our options with regard to our indoor gunshot detection offering, which may include ceasing to offer indoor gunshot detection or partnering with an indoor gunshot detection solution provider.

When a potential gunfire incident is detected by our sensors, our software uses quantitative computational analysis and artificial intelligence methods to precisely locate and classify the sound. A digital alert containing map and location information about the incident is transmitted directly to subscribing law enforcement or security personnel through any internet-connected computer and to iPhone® or Android mobile devices.

For gunshots occurring outdoors, our software transmits the validated sensor data along with a recorded digital file of the triggering sound to our IRC, where our trained acoustic experts are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to screen and confirm actual gunfire incidents. Our acoustic experts can supplement alerts with additional tactical information, such as the potential presence of multiple shooters or the use of high-capacity weapons. For outdoor gunshot incidents reviewed by our IRC, alerts are typically sent within 45 seconds of the gunfire incident. For gunshots occurring indoors, our solutions are designed to automatically alert security personnel within ten seconds.

The heart of our solutions is our sophisticated and highly-specialized software. Our software analyzes audio signals for potential gunshots first in our intelligent sensors. Our sensor then filters out ambient background noise, such as traffic or wind, and looks for impulsive sounds characteristic of gunfire. If the sensor detects such an impulse, it extracts pulse features of the soundwave, such as sharpness, strength, duration, rise time and decay time. Then, the sensor sends these features to our cloud servers as part of a data packet that includes the location coordinates of the reporting sensor and the precise time-of-arrival and angle-of-arrival of the sound.

When the data reaches to our cloud servers, our software assesses whether three or more of our outdoor sensors detected the same sound impulse and, if so, multilaterates the location coordinates of the sound source based on the time of arrival and the angle of arrival of the sound. The software then verifies that the data is mathematically consistent with the sound having originated at a single location. The accuracy of the coordinates derived from our proprietary software is significantly improved when more than three sensors participate, as is typically the case. We deploy our sensor arrays such that, on average, eight sensors participate in the detection of a gunshot.

After the software determines the location of the sound source, the machine classifier algorithms analyze the pulse features to determine if the sound is likely to be gunfire. Our algorithms consider pulse features, the distance from the sound source, pattern matching and other heuristic methods to evaluate and classify the sound. The machine classifier is periodically trained and validated against a large database of known gunfire and other community sounds that are impulsive in nature. We continue to add new data to our machine learning database from the incidents reviewed by our acoustic experts in our IRC process. Classification continuously improves as the machine classifiers are re-trained using the expanded data set.

Once an outdoor incident is classified as likely gunfire, it is sent to the acoustic experts in our IRC for additional analysis and confirmation. Along with confirming an incident is gunfire, our acoustic experts also annotate the alerts with additional information that may be helpful to first responders, such as whether there are multiple shooters or if a high-capacity or fully automatic weapon is being used. The time from outdoor trigger-pull to a notification being sent to our customers is typically 45 seconds or less.

Compared to outdoor sensors, our indoor sensors are likely to be close to the shooting event and have a direct line of sight to the gunfire. Our indoor sensors therefore are designed to detect optical characteristics in the infrared spectrum of the gunfire muzzle flash, in addition to the acoustic characteristics of the muzzle blast, thereby significantly increasing the ability of machine classification. The location of indoor gunshots is determined by knowing the location of the installed sensors and time stamping the pulse arrival time. The sensor with the earliest time stamp determines the location of the shooter. Because the information from the acoustic and infrared transducers is sufficient to make a reliable computer classification of the sound as gunfire, indoor gunshot incidents are not reviewed by our IRC. In the case of an indoor gunshot, the time from trigger-pull to notification is typically less than ten seconds.

Incidents of suspected indoor gunfire automatically trigger emergency response notifications that are simultaneously delivered and made available online. Outdoor incident notifications are sent when the incident is confirmed as gunfire by one of our acoustic experts. Alerts are delivered by SMS text and push notifications and, in the case of outdoor gunfire, also through our mobile applications.

Our rugged gunshot detection sensor is an intelligent, internet-enabled device that is specially built to ignore ambient noise and respond to impulsive sounds, accurately time-stamping their arrival times. Advanced digital signal processing algorithms extract pulse features from the audio signal that, along with the time and angle of arrival of the sound, are sent to our servers where algorithms compute the location of the sound source.

Our sensors are designed and tested against international standards for installation in unprotected outdoor environments. Special consideration is given to minimize the sound of wind, rain and hail, which could otherwise limit the range of detection and produce false results. Environmental condition tests performed on the sensors include temperature cycling, temperature soak, shock, vibration, salt fog and moisture ingress protection.

For outdoor deployments, we typically design and deploy arrays of 20 to 25 sensors per square mile taking into consideration the unique acoustic environment in which we are deploying. The cumulative experience of deploying in various cities with different acoustic properties has provided a distinct advantage in tailoring our sensor arrays to perform at high levels. We have full telemetry to each sensor that provides detailed heartbeat data to our system to monitor each sensor’s health and availability. Sensor firmware is maintained with over-the-air updates. Because we purposely over-deploy our sensor arrays, multiple sensors can be offline at any given time without affecting the overall performance of the system.

To date, while we have seen growing interest in our security solutions, interest in the indoor gunshot detection offering has been limited. We expect future customer deployments for our security solutions to consist primarily of outdoor gunshot detection deployments. We are evaluating our options with regard to our indoor gunshot detection offering, which may include ceasing to offer indoor gunshot detection or partnering with an indoor gunshot detection solution provider.

Our IRC operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. When a loud impulsive sound triggers enough of our outdoor sensors that an incident is detected and located, audio from the incident is sent to our IRC via secure, high-speed network connections for real-time confirmation. Within seconds of an incident, one of our acoustic experts analyzes audio data and recordings of the potential gunfire. When gunfire is confirmed, our IRC team sends an alert directly to emergency dispatch centers and field personnel through any computer or mobile device with access to the Internet. This process typically takes less than 45 seconds from the time of the gunshot. Alerts include:

the precise location of gunfire, including both latitude/longitude and street address;

the number and exact time of shots fired;

the number of shooters; and

if detectable, the use of fully automatic or high-capacity weapons.

Our IRC operates primarily out of our principal facilities in Newark, California and receives audio from incidents detected by our outdoor sensors regardless of where such incidents occur. Although our IRC currently operates at a single location, our trained personnel can perform IRC functions from any location that has a high-speed internet connection.